70 , - -'7 10J!' jl ' 1 . í þ fr V' t J f II 1!l'''f Í TfllUH 1 .. IJ j,: 1 j Jl r- { . 1 ' :. t .:;Dr.)'l t;, (; 1"; " rll ? &J "."1, 10. ]\Jv _I" r- \ I j .II , r j j 7 I r t.2!tL f l. E I r Hr #j!t 1 Jp 1 /I . fJ, I J.c:: '" I ,r& Ji )i.u' tir;,'J':Jt:',.\:I ) :i ' : - :L ' . 'J. last years of his life. He may have thought that the odes to Stalin did not matter . Weren't they written out of fear, and hadn't he always believed that almost everything is Justified in the face of violence? This was the wisdom of his "Mr. Keuner" (in the "Gesclllchten vom Herrn Keuner"), who, however, around 1 9 3 0 was still a bit more fastidi- ous In the choice of his means than his author twenty years later. In dark times, so one of the stories goes, there came an agent of the rulers to the home of a man who "had learnt how to SelY no." The agent claimed the man's home and food as his own and asked him, "\-'\Till you wait upon me?" The man put him to bed, covered him with a blanket, guarded his sleep, and obeyed him for seven years. But whatever he did, he never spoke a single word. After the seven years were over, the agent had grown fat with eating, sleeping, and giving orders, and he died. The man wrapped him in the rotten blanket, threw hIm out of the house, washed the bed, painted the walls, sighed with re- lief, and answered, "No." Had Brecht forgotten Mr. Keuner's wisdom not to " y "" I h say es r n an) event, w at concerns us here is the sad fact that the few poems of his last years, published posthumously, are weak and thin. The exceptIons are minor There is the much quoted witticism after the work- ers' rebellion of 1953: "After the re- I )" . . bellion of the seventeenth of June. . . one could read that the ptople had for- feited the government's confidence and could regain it only by redoubling their work efforts. Would it not be simpler for the government to dissolve the peo- ple and elect another one?" There are a number of very touching lines in love poems and nursery rhymes. And, most important, there are praises of purpose- lessness, of which the best sounds like a half-conscious variation on Angelus S " 1 . , f " Oh W " ] eSIUS s amous ne arum. ("The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms, / It cares not for it- self, asks not if it is seen.") Brecht wrItes: Ã ch, wie soli en wir die kleine Rose buchen? Plötzlzch dunkelrot und jung und nah? Ach, wir kamen nicht, sie zu besuchen A ber als wir kamen, war sie da. Eh sie da war, ward sie nlcht erwartet. A Is sie da war, u'ard sip kaum geglaubt. A ch, zum Ziele kam, was nle gestartet. A ber war es so nicht überhaupt? (How, oh how, can vve account for the little rose? Suddenly dark red and young and near? Oh, we didn't come to visit her, but when we came she"", as there. Before she \\ras, she wasn't expected; "rhen she appeared, she was hard to believe in. Oh, something arrived that had never been started. But is that not the way it has al ways been?) That Brecht could write such verses at all indicates an unexpected and de- ß. Ø;r cisive shift in the poet's mood; only his early poetry, in the "Manual of Piety," shows the same freedom from worldly purposes and cares, and in the place of the earlier tone of jubilation o[ defiance there is now the peculiar stillness of wonder and gratitude. The one perfect product of these last years, consisting of two four-line love stanzas, is a variation on a German nursery rhyme, and therefore untranslatable. For those who kno\v German: Sleben Rosen hat der Strauch Sechs gehör'n dem IfTind A ber eine bleibt, dass auch I ch noch eine find. Sieben Male ruf ich dich Sechsmal blelbe fort Doch beim siebten Mal, versprich K omme auf ein Wort. Everything indicated that the poet had found a new voice-perhaps "the dving swan's song that is held to be the most beautiful"-but when the mo- ment came for the voice to be heard, it seemed to have lost its power. This is the only objective and therefore un- questionable sign we have that he had transgressed the rather wide limits set for poets, that he had crossed the line marking what was permitted to him. For these boundaries, alas, cannot be detected from the outside, and can hardly even be guessed at. They are like faint ridges, all but invisible to the